Bag of Bones

Bag of Bones (Unabridged Book on 20 CD's), Stephen King, read by Stephen King, 1998, Simon & Schuster Audio.

Mike Noonan, a best-selling writer, whose wife Joanna, died four years ago, encounters many faces of evil in his Maine get-away home, named Sara Laughs. He befriends Matty Devore and her three year old daughter Kyra just as the girl's grandfather, computer tycoon Max Devore, attempts to take her away from her mother to raise himself. He kills himself halfway through but his ghost will not rest. Nor will the ghost of Sara Tidwell, after whom Mike's house was named. Sara was the lead singer of a Negro band of the early 20th century called the Red Tops. She and her young son Kito were savagely murdered by ancestors of the current town's leading citizens. Sara will not rest until she is avenged. She works in the souls of the current citizens and the ghosts of their ancestors until all of the offspring have been drowned as her little boy was drowned. At a point, Mike finds himself consciously planning to do so with Kyra. But the ghost of his dead wife, Jo, helps by sending him clues via refrigerator magnets, showing him the notes she was accumulating during her life (that she hid under her studio in a pair of plastic owls), and even manifesting to do battle with the psychic demon that possesses Sara. Matty dies but Mike takes Kyra to raise as his own.

9-Jun-2001